A Californian businessman bought scores of properties in the US and Turkey after defrauding the US government of $470m.
Lev Dermen, the owner of a chain of Californian truck stops, teamed up with Jacob Kingston, who belongs to a secretive Mormon sect called the Order, to create a fake biodiesel business which claimed millions of dollars from the US government in a scam they referred to as “bleeding the beast”.
Among the properties bought were a $3.5m oceanfront home in California and a villa on the Bosphorus strait.
The case is being heard in a federal court in Salt Lake City, Utah.
